


impaired homeostasis

by NightsMistress



Category: Wild ARMs 2
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Unwanted Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:14:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28502826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: Irving's gone missing, the psychedelic sky is a herald for the interdimensional invasion, and Ashley is a foothold through which Lord Blazer will come through to destroy Filgaia. There's a fragile balance between Ashley and Lord Blazer, one that is becoming increasingly unstable as the day of invasion draws closer. Ashley gets a taste of what is to come, and Kanon ends up his very unexpected support.
Kudos: 2





	impaired homeostasis

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta, Morbane, for reading over a work for a game you have never played.

Consciousness returned slowly, a kaleidoscope of sensory information that he couldn't assemble into a coherent picture. He tried anyway, choking on air as he swallowed past the grit and metal of dirt and blood coating his tongue, smelling the ozone that lingered on his overly-sensitive skin. It took him some time to understand that the thing he was clutching painfully in his knotted hands was his bayonet: warm to the touch but not with the heat of a recently discharged bullet. He must have discharged his weapon some time earlier. He didn't remember when, or why.

He blinked several times against a terrible headache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, until he could see less and so understand what it was that he could see. He was in a long cavern with a high roof, made from stone that still bore the marks from the teeth and claws of ancient mining machinery. Luminescent stones were embedded in the walls, casting a sickly green-white light onto everything, from the ground to the glittering of unmined ore still present in the roof. 

The twisted, rusted metal frames of long-abandoned machines cast large, strange shadows, drawing his eye to the mess of meat and bone at his feet. He took a step backward, his breath catching in his throat as a sob. The smell rising from the monster's butchered remains turned his stomach, as did the realisation that he did not remember how the monster had come to die.

"Ashley?"

Ashley looked up at the sound of his name and saw a woman -- no, _Kanon_ , he saw Kanon --gazing at him impassively. Her knife was drawn, and her body was coiled like a spring. The two of them stared at one another before Kanon sheathed her knife. The tension remained, but it always did with Kanon.

She had reason to be wary of him.

He swayed on his feet, locking his knees before he fell. The dizziness and exhaustion that threatened to drive Ashley to his knees could only have one cause. When he was younger, and it was safer to swim around Meria, he and Marina had gone to the beach. He’d gone swimming only to be caught in an undertow and dragged out to sea. The way he felt now, bewildered and drowning on air, was a lot like the desperate gasping of air and water back then. Lord Blazer had swept him away and now he needed to bring himself home.

"What -- how long?" Speaking that much was hard in a mouth that felt like it had too few teeth, too soft and fragile.

"Five minutes."

Five minutes was long enough to do anything to anyone. Last time, Lord Blazer had made him watch as he closed his hand around Marina's throat and squeezed. This time, it seemed that his other self had left him nothing but a fired gun and a dead monster. The uncertainty was worse than the knowing. What had he done? _What had he done?_

"Did I --" and he stopped, because he wasn't sure he could calmly listen to the answer.

Kanon waited. The silence stretched out.

Finally, Ashley forced himself to speak. He needed to know whether it was Ashley who had killed the monster with a bayonet, or whether Lord Blazer had torn the monster apart with Ashley’s hands. One was what people did, and one was what a puppet would do. He needed to know which one he was.

"What did I do?"

"You killed a monster." Kanon's level tone and impassive expression was of some comfort, even if her words were less than illuminating.

Ashley looked down at the corpse, swallowed, and looked away. He'd seen corpses of monsters before, as killing them was part and parcel of living on Filgaia. This corpse looked like it had been torn apart with claws, and he swallowed against the memory of his hands tearing into something. His hands were caked with blood, but so was the blade of his bayonet. Could both be true? Surely not. If he had torn a monster apart with his bare hands, Kanon should have killed him before he became himself once more.

"That's all I did?" he ventured, when nothing more was said. "I didn't … do anything else?"

"That's right." She looked at him sidelong before asking, "Did you expect there to be something else?"

She sounded concerned. Ashley bit the inside of his mouth, not hard enough to break the skin but maintaining a steady pressure that reminded him of who and where he was. Now wasn't the time to confess his sins to Kanon. At the very least, he should wait until they were no longer underground.

"No," he said when he thought he could keep his voice from shaking. He took another breath to steady himself before asking, "Where are the others?"

"They went back to Valeria Chateau to wait for us."

Of course. If Kanon had had to put him down, it would have been too cruel to do it in front of Lilka and Tim. For all that they were part of ARMS, they were still children. There were things that the adult members of ARMS should take care of, rather than leaving for children to fix.

"Are you ready to go?" Kanon asked, interrupting his thoughts.

Ashley sighed and forced himself to stand upright, using the shaft of his bayonet as a walking stick. The ground was rough and uneven underfoot, with a steep incline, but he thought that if they took it slow he should be able to make it. After all, he had made it down here.

"Yeah, I think so," he said firmly, mostly to convince himself that it was true. "I'm tired, but I should be able to manage."

Kanon set the pace, faster than Ashley had thought she would, and he pushed himself to keep up. He had misjudged the gradient of the path, and within steps he was struggling to put one foot in front of the other and keep his knees from folding under him. The humidity and stagnant air of underground made it hard for him to breathe. Kanon seemed to have no difficulties, striding up along the path without breathing hard, but Ashley staggered in her wake.

Finally, she stopped and looked back at him. 

"Here," she said, stepping closer to slide her shoulder under his and slinging his arm across her shoulders. This close, he could smell her cybernetics, taste the charge that lay under her skin, and see where the metal interfaced with flesh and bone. He closed his eyes, pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and shivered at how this did nothing to block out the expanding of his senses. No human should be able to do this.

"It's not long now," Kanon said. "A hundred steps or so."

"I'm fine," he said, trying to smile. It felt like a rictus.

"Hm," Kanon said, but to Ashley's profound relief said nothing more. 

He focused on counting the steps, and Kanon's estimate was not far off. They reached the surface at one hundred and five steps, and Ashley raised his head as a twilight breeze brushed against his cheek. The psychedelic colours of the sky struck his vision like a blow, and the absence of a horizon made his head spin. He leaned against Kanon for balance. She was a tall woman, but she staggered under his weight before planting her feet once more. If it wasn't for the fact that he could hear her grit her teeth, he would think her unaffected by the interdimensional invasion overhead.

He hated that a part of him looked up overhead and thought _home_.

He forced himself to look away, and focus on his immediate surroundings. Their campsite was still there, to his surprise, the tent and fire pit untouched by the monsters or by the other ARMS members. Kanon walked him over to the campsite and guided him down to the log they had used as a seat the previous night, and then stepped away to pull her transmitter from her pocket.

"This is Kanon," she said. "Ashley and I will be staying here until morning." She frowned in response to something she had heard, before saying, "No, it's fine. We'll take care of it." She shoved the transmitter back into her pocket and kneeled near Ashley.

"Was that Brad?" Ashley asked as Kanon pulled a firestarter from her pocket. She struck it a few times, shaking it when it didn't light. Ashley handed her his, which ignited the first time. The twigs caught alight, the flame comforting in its familiarity. 

"Yeah," Kanon said, sitting down on the other end of the log. She pulled her knife out and started inspecting the blade. "They'll come around with Lombardia in the morning."

"That's not necessary," Ashley protested. "I can use the Teleport Gem." 

Kanon looked up from her inspection. "Can you?"

Under the weight of her gaze, Ashley had to admit, "Perhaps not now."

"There's no harm in resting now," Kanon said. "Irving will wait until the morning."

The fire burned bright against the psychedelic sky, Irving was missing, and Kanon was trying to comfort him rather than killing him. Ashley wanted to laugh at the absurdity of Kanon being his confidant instead of his murderer, except if he started he might not stop. He wanted to go back to Valeria Chateau, if not Meria itself, close the blinds, and pretend for a night that none of this was happening, but he had to concede that if he tried to go home right now he would probably teleport into the sea instead. Irving would wait until the morning, because he must, and Ashley should rest.

He fed a twig into the fire, holding onto it until he had to let go or risk burning his hand. Then another, this one larger and slower to burn. There were things he should do -- maintain his bayonet, check their supplies, check in with ARMs -- but the lethargy that came with Lord Blazer transforming him was too much to overcome.

"You should sleep," Kanon said, and this did startle a laugh out of him. He covered his mouth with his hands as if to catch the laughter before it escaped, or to stop himself from laughing further.

"Sorry," he said when the urge to laugh further faded. "I can't. It's funny, I'm always tired, but I just can't sleep." Another stick into the fire. "Can I talk with you?"

Kanon shrugged.

"If you like."

In a way it was cruel to use Kanon as a sounding board. She had made it very clear during their journey that her purpose in travelling with them was to stop Ashley, if need be, and not to make friends. She was prickly and stand-offish, preferred her own company, and had shared nothing of her life before joining them. And yet, she was here and was trying to comfort him in her own way, and he was here and needed to put his thoughts into words.

Ashley looked up at the sky again.

"I miss the stars," he confessed. "I never thought about it before, but everything seems more lonely now they're gone. As if we're the only ones left in the universe, and soon we'll be swallowed up by the other universe."

She said nothing. There might not be anything to say in response to what he had said. He looked across at her, testing the edge of her blade, and said, "You weren't surprised, were you?"

He couldn't bring himself to say, _You weren't surprised Lord Blazer took over,_ as if saying it made it more real. She didn't pretend she didn't understand, and didn't condescend by pretending she had been surprised.

"No," she said. She was silent a time. So was Ashley. "You've been struggling against him for a long time. Sometimes, when you looked at us, it wasn't just you. I expected something like this sooner or later."

It was the longest speech Kanon had made. It was also one of the more horrifying. Ashley knew how brittle his grip was on his body, and how Lord Blazer was constantly chipping away at it. The surge of power and then fatigue in its wake, the expanding of senses, the unexpected transformations - they were all designed to refashion his body to Lord Blazer's liking. He had chosen not to tell anyone about it, because it was easier to struggle alone than to struggle under the weight of faith. It seemed that fate was making a mockery of his determination to not burden anyone, if Kanon of all people had noticed.

"If you knew this was going on for so long, why didn't you do anything?"

"Because I knew you were there too."

Ashley shook his head. Kanon had said that she would kill him if necessary. She hadn't last time, and Marina had gotten hurt. What would the next time bring? 

"I don't understand," he said. "I just don't understand. He's turning me into him. You said you'd stop me. Why aren't you?"

Kanon was silent a long time.

"I wondered that too," she said finally. "But I know the answer now: the you that is Ashley is still there. I … I cannot kill you while you are you and not the demon." Her expression wasn't a smile, but instead a softening of her usual stony facade. "If you become the demon again, and cannot come back, I will stop you."

He wanted to believe it.

"Will you?"

"Yes," she said, not taking offence to the question. "Not despite my heart, but because of it. I will stop you to save the world … and also, to save a friend."

"I'd be dead then," Ashley agreed. "Or worse -- I wouldn't be me. I'd be him."

"Yes. You would be. You'd fight until the end. That's why I can say I would stop the 'you' that would exist afterward."

Ashley blinked back tears. Kanon was always clear-sighted, always assessing risks; if she had assessed the risks and thought that he could and would put up a fight against Lord Blazer, and hold out long enough for Kanon to be able to stop him, then it must be so. He must be tired, if Kanon expressing faith in him drove him to tears.

He cleared his throat.

“Well!" he said brightly, trying to mask his embarrassment. "I guess I’ll have to keep fighting the other me, if you’re that confident in me.”

"Yes, you will," Kanon said. "You must keep fighting and return to the people who rely on you.”

"Yeah, I can't keep Marina or ARMS waiting."

The sky was still hidden behind a psychedelic mask, Lord Blazer still lurked in the shadows of Ashley's mind, ready to take over at any time, and they still needed answers from Irving. And yet, things didn't seem quite so terrible now that Kanon had promised to kill him if necessary. Ashley thought of thanking her, but thought that would be too embarrassing for both of them. Instead, he fed another stick into the fire and resolved to hold out. To be the person that Kanon believed he was, if only until everything was done.


End file.
